No one is going to choose you just because you are there.
People are only going to choose you if you give them a reason to do so.
If someone were to choose your product or service instead of a competitor, why would they choose you?
How To Create An Effective Schedule
One of the best ways to effectively manage your time is by creating a powerful schedule. The ideal schedule is an uncomfortable adventure that results in progress in the right areas while not being a burden at the same time. I enforce a strict schedule on myself every summer that ultimately allows me to get a lot of work done but also gives me some time to kick back and relax. I do not schedule anything just to put more work on the table. Everything has a purpose. Just to give everyone an idea, this will be the typical day for me this summer.
- Work out for 4 hours. I want to have a very strong Junior year for my track and cross country teams.
- Work on a book for 1-2 hour. I want to finish another book during the summer and have it published before the New Year. This will make sure Lead The Stampede is not my only physical book.
- Create videos for 1 hour. I will be launching membership sites and training courses in the near future. Summer is going to kickstart that.
- Write blog posts for 1 hour. That’s enough time to write at least 5 blog posts every day.
- Write video scripts for 15 minutes. Before I start a video, I need to know what I am going to say. Speaking off the cuff was horrible, and those days are over.
- Other business activities for 30 minutes (reading or responding to emails). When they come up, they will get done.
I understand that I will not be able to do this every day in the summer, especially on vacation days. Regardless, my goal is to get as close as possible towards accomplishing all of these goals on my schedule. This 9 hour schedule does create some discomfort, but the discomfort is needed in order to get more accomplished. It still beats the 9 to 5 (no traffic),
The key elements of my schedule is that everything has a purpose, it is not an easy schedule to follow, and it promises big rewards for being implemented. The idea of getting big rewards (for me, that would be a bestselling book, a membership site with the potential of making thousands every month, and getting a lot faster) will allow you to push through the work. By giving yourself high standards, you will be able to get more accomplished. I could easily get by with writing two blog posts every day and not doing anything else. However, I would not be able to unlock my potential by limiting my growth.
You will never know how much you can truly accomplish until you raise your standards.
One Big Reason To Use HootSuite Pro
Many people have praised HootSuite as the #1 free Twitter tool. I have used HootSuite for over a year now, but I decided that now was the time to go pro. The 30 day free trial got me interested, but I was also able to take an advantage of a 30 day free coupon, so I ended up getting a 2 month free trial. While there are many features for HootSuite Pro members, I recently became a HootSuite Pro member. In the future, I will write a longer blog post about multiple reasons to use HootSuite Pro, but for now, I am going to share with you the big feature.
The big feature is the Bulk Scheduler. Since I send out 48 tweets every day with links to my blog posts, I tweet the same blog posts twice (actually more than that, but identical tweets get separated by a week). I found a way to make the process faster by having all of my tweets in a document on my computer, and then I would copy and paste them all one by one. This took a large amount of time.
Then came HootSuite Pro and the Bulk Scheduler. All I do now is put all of my tweets in multiple CSV files, I send them to HootSuite, and they do the rest. Although it took me a day to get used to how the CSV files work, they now save me an enormous amount of time. Within 10 clicks, my tweets are scheduled for an entire day. With the free version of HootSuite, it would take much more than 10 clicks to schedule half of a day’s worth of tweets.
If you tweet links to your blog posts and bring your old blog posts back from the dead, the Bulk Scheduler alone is the reason why you should get HootSuite Pro. If you like the Bulk Scheduler, there are several other features that HootSuite Pro users get, and when I get more time to take a look, I will write another lengthy blog post about it.
What are your thoughts about HootSuite Pro? Are you thinking about HootSuite Pro, do you have HootSuite Pro, or did you discover that HootSuite Pro is not for you? Please share what you think about HootSuite Pro below.
5 Ways To Respond To Emails Quicker
Responding to emails can be a pain in the neck, especially when they prevent you from getting any of your work done. Avoiding emails is not an effective way to solve the problem because responding to emails will allow you to build connections with your potential customers. However, there are some ways to respond to emails faster so that you have more time to do your own work. Here are 5 ways to do that.
- Have a signature that automatically appears at the bottom at the bottom of all of your emails. Are you getting tired of writing sincerely and your name for hundreds of emails? I was getting tired of doing the same thing. I decided to find a way to automate that part of my email. I did some searching on Google and found out how to have an automated signature on the Mac. Now, this automated signature saves me more time.
- Choose the right emails to respond to. Some emails are more important than others. As you get more emails, you will not be able to respond to them all. On some days, I read over 100 emails, but I do not respond to all 100 of those emails. That is because some of them have the no-reply, but if I responded to 100 emails every day, I would not be able to write any of these blog posts. When responding to emails, respond to the most important emails first and work your way down.
- Give yourself a daily rate. For the most part, I respond to 3-5 emails every day and send out 2-4 emails every day (not including the blog posts). When I go above the daily rate, I know that I am losing valuable time to write blog posts, write my book, or work on a training course. For the most part, I avoid going above this daily rate, but as the amount of time I have increases (summer), and I am getting more emails, I will increase these rates. Instead of guessing how many emails you will send and respond to in a given day, you have a standard.
- Look for patterns. While sending out HARO queries for my book Lead The Stampede (which will be out this summer), I noticed a pattern in how I responded to emails. Instead of writing the same thing 50 times, I only wrote it once. Then, I simply copied and pasted what I would have typed into the 49 other emails with small changes (name of the person, the story, etc).
- Hire an assistant. When you start to make it big time, you should hire an assistant to respond to your emails for you. Not only will this make you look more professional, but you will also have more time to do your work. The assistant can tell you about important emails you got for the day so you can respond to the right ones instead of reading all of the individual emails that appear in your inbox.
Those are the five ways to respond to emails quicker. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips that you would like to mention? Please share your thoughts and tips below.
How Urgency At TJ Maxx Increased My Productivity
It was getting obvious that my wardrobe needed to be revamped. I was wearing two of the same shirts every week, and I was getting tired of it. The solution was to buy clothing at TJ Maxx because of the low prices and good quality. The only problem is that we arrived at TJ Maxx at 8:30 pm, and the store closes at 9:30 pm.
It took me 30 minutes to find everything I wanted which means I had 30 minutes to try on 24 articles of clothing. I was going at a relatively slow pace until I heard that there were only 15 minutes left until closing time. That was when I kicked it in. I went through three articles of clothing a minute, and it was a close one. In the end, I was able to go on line with five minutes to spare.
The urgency of thinking I would leave with no clothing after spending an hour of the store resulted in me speeding up. Because of this urgency and increased speed, I know have a giant wardrobe and definitely won’t be wearing the same shirt every week.
When we get pushed, we become more productive. Getting pushed forces us out of the shell of stagnancy.
How I Find The Time To Publish 2 Blog Posts Every Day
When I made the change last summer to write two blog posts every day instead of one blog post, I knew it was going to require a lot more work. In addition, I knew that I was encountered with a decision to cross the Rubicon. Once I start something new, and I like the results, I have a need to remain consistent and show gradual improvements.
Writing two blog posts every day was a big step for me. I had 20 blog posts scheduled at the time, but instead of having 20 days of blog posts left, I only had 10 days of blog posts left. Instead of writing three blog posts on some days and then taking a break, I started to write blog posts every day. In fact, I continue writing blog posts every day even now (unless something stops me from getting to my computer).
The biggest factor towards me being able to write two blog posts every day is that I love what I do. If I had forced myself to write a certain number of words per blog post, I would not have liked this as much. When I first started writing two blog posts every day, they were short and filled with mistakes. No one noticed because at the time, my blog was not getting a lot of visitors. I was simply practicing.
Then, I had the realization that I could make it far as an author, blogger, and entrepreneur. My short blog posts started gaining momentum, and now all of the blog posts on my blog combined average out to be 250 words per blog post. This indicates the big increase in words and information I have shared in more recent posts (in the beginning, many of my blog posts had 100 words or less). After the love came, the vision was able to drive me further. Then, I decided to increase the rate that I send out blog posts.
Then there’s time management. My ability to effectively manage my time has been a crucial part towards writing more blog posts. My love for blogging and the vision made me more willing to carve out hours of time to write blog posts. In order to carve out that time, I needed to sacrifice other things. I used to be a couch potato and watch TV for countless hours. Now, I only watch The Big Bang Theory, my Red Sox when they are on the diamond, and some football. Since those are not on every night, I sometimes go for days without watching TV. I decided that in order to become successful, I would have to commit more time to becoming successful. It’s a success model that makes sense, and it’s a success model that I decided to implement.
Ultimately, it comes down to your love for doing something and your vision. Having the love to do something and the vision of great success will make the process of time management a lot easier. We tend to carve out more time to do the things we believe can change our situation (or the world) than we carve out time for washing the dishes.
And that’s how I am able to two blog posts every day. So far, I have never worked a single day in my life, and I plan to have that statement remain true for my entire life.